Though Bob Dylan’s legacy hangs over modern songwriting in complex and incalculable ways, it’s possible that his most lasting contribution is the dichotomy his music established between the “serious” world of folk music and the comparably “frivolous” world of pop music. Of course, Dylan had little to do with this himself. He was an admittedly eager consumer of Little Richard and Chuck Berry records in the ‘50s, and he didn’t shy away from befriending the Beatles when they were the symbol of all that was anathema to the folk community. Still, the seriousness of his artistry and the sagacity of his writing soon made it very clear that his music wasn’t for screaming 14-year-old girls and teenybopper radio, and he brought into the mainstream a challenge to every self-respecting tunesmith who deemed themselves worthy of picking up a guitar and a pen to bring something more substantive than empty platitudes and love clichés. After Dylan, an artist had to at least give the appearance of a certain level of seriousness to be taken seriously, and carrying an acoustic guitar and being lyrically inscrutable were (and still are) generally enough to discourage any notions to the contrary. As much as any other modern act, Iron & Wine belongs to this tradition.

Emerging at around the same time that the psychedelic folk resurgence was gaining traction, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine doesn’t have much more than superficialities in common with his shaggy-haired brethren. For one, he favors understatement and hushed tones, writing songs thick with metaphor and symbolism instead of fairytale whimsy and vague platitudes. For another, apart from his unusually prodigious beard growth, there’s nothing even slightly outlandish about Beam’s persona, and there are few reasons to wonder what odd incantations echo through his home. If Conor Oberst is the modern equivalent to Neil Young, Beam is arguably the counterpart to James Taylor, an everyman sage from the Carolinas with a catalog of songs that provide material for contemplation but seem otherwise designed not to rock the boat. Still, Beam never goes for the same sentimental cheese that has marred Taylor’s lesser moments, and his writing reads more like Biblical prophecy than someone’s private journal. In short, where freak folkies often seem to place much priority on music as a community ideal, creating a way of life that just happens to include their art as one facet, Beam is truly a poet. He’s a serious songwriter, no doubt, with gravitas to spare, but in comparison his songs are just more careful, more sturdily and obviously built, and, often, far less interesting.

His third full-length, The Shepherd’s Dog is Beam’s first significant
creative curveball, uprooting the largely threadbare acoustic
renderings of his first two albums and throwing a full band into the
mix. Following up on a collaborative album he made with Americana
standouts Calexico as his backing band, Beam has been tending in this
direction for some time, and it’s natural that he should eventually
push his music to its next stage of evolution. Still, leaving the
solemn intimacy that earned him his reputation is a dangerous prospect,
as Beam’s strength has been in creating a perfectly insular sonic space
where his simple arrangements provided an uncluttered setting for his
remarkably imaginative writing. Now, piling on layers of electric
guitar, piano, organ and hand drums, the results are mixed, at best.

To his credit, Beam’s introduction of more conventionally arranged
sounds doesn’t pull his music into the adult contemporary gutter where
it easily could have gone. Instead, he favors a vaguely psychedelic
mix, like the trilling swirls of piano on “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed
Car” and the thick electric guitar lines and sitar of “White Tooth
Man.” Without a doubt, this is Beam’s most experimental moment, with
nearly every track tangled in crisscrossing melodic lines, whether the
fuzzy pedal steel and handclaps of “Boy with a Coin” or the squawky
harmonica of “House by the Sea.” Even so, despite the bit of
back-masking and hazy guitar leads, Beam is still at his best on the
comparably uncluttered “Flightless Bird, American Mouth,” a
straightforward waltz that captures him inhabiting various first-person
perspectives en route to one of the album’s most immediate hooks.

Far less successful are Beam’s stylistic experiments, as the slightly
Caribbean feel and breezy melodies of “Innocent Bones” and the mewling
wah-wah guitar lines of “Peace Beneath the City” never build much
beyond their soft rock grooves and empty-ended hooks. Even worse is
“Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog),” with a go-nowhere groove propped
up by blandly layered vocals and scratchy electric guitar that comes
off like the Eagles making an awkward stab at funk. Even “The Devil
Never Sleeps,” a track that recalls early Joni Mitchell drained of her
jazz inflections, seems misguidedly paired with a boogeying piano line.

As always, Beam remains an arresting lyricist, but his cat’s cradle of
Biblical allusions and meticulous Southern gothic signposts get buried
under the layers of reverb. Still, his eye for detail is startling,
even when it’s unclear that he’s saying much of anything at all.
Plainclothes cops rub elbows with the Holy Ghost, jealous sisters wait
and plot in a seaside cabin, and one protagonist even transforms from a
boy to a housecat, but it’s all just as easy to overlook as it is to
follow, as nothing comes through particularly coherently. Like Dylan
circa Highway 61 Revisited, it’s a vividly imagined universe that Beam
creates, one full of characters that seem torn out of the mythology of
the folk tradition, to be cast upon a surreal backdrop of timeless
cultural references. But unlike Dylan, Beam’s words can be ignored
without much effort, allowed to drift through the arrangement as
another blurry instrument in an admirably adventurous though
ill-fitting mix.

The main shortcoming of The Shepherd’s Dog is that it sits so solidly
in the bland crossroads of folk, pop and rock, never tipping decisively
in any particular direction. That alone is surely not a shortcoming, as
there are few things in life more boring than an artist who wants to
solidly fit into one clear musical tradition, but Beam’s lack of
melodic or rhythmic variation renders his music into one soft focus
lump. Often, he simply sounds tentative, lost among the layers of sonic
gloss. His vocals barely, if ever, register much above a layered
half-whisper. His arrangements are repetitive to a fault, often
settling into comfortable mid-tempo two-chord groove never really
featuring choruses or particularly memorable verses. His phrasing is
without nuance, never placing any more emphasis on any word or lyrical
couplet, underselling the theatrical potential of such rich narratives.
Instead, he performs songs with no sense of drama or urgency, with no
stubborn hairs out of place and everything dissolving into a wash of
softly malted harmonies and plaintive guitar strums. For certain, the
songs aren’t without their charm, but even after repeated listens the
melodies seem flat and underdeveloped, the performances lack energy,
and the grooves grow stale after a few minutes of cycling through the
same simple turns.

All in all, The Shepherd’s Dog is the work of a serious artist, not
likely to be mistaken for childish fluff anytime soon. Still, it’s a
strangely unfulfilling ride, easily his most eclectic and adventurous
release but also his most unfocused and least memorable. Despite the
increased assortment of sounds, the songs end up feeling less varied
than the guitar-and-vocals arrangements of his previous albums. In
retrospect, what those releases lacked in deviation they more than made
up for with clarity, with songs perfectly constructed to make the most
of their limited resources. Here, he’s a painter with too many colors
to choose from, covering over previously sharp edges with a blurry wash
of tones and textures. No doubt, Beam is an artist with something to
say, but never before has that statement sounded so muffled.

Sound
Though earlier Iron & Wine albums displayed a paucity of textures,
those releases often featured a clarity and crispness that The
Shepherd’s Dog lacks. With thick reverb hanging around the edges of
every electric guitar line and warm organ riff, there are no sonic
peaks or valleys, only soft tones that grow tiresome in their
universally hazy aura. That said, the textures often sound suitably
rich, though so busy that they steal attention from Beam’s hushed
performances and dryly understated vocals, with small instrumental
touches that require close listening (or high end equipment) to fully
separate in the mix.